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By Scott Sumner
David Henderson argues that blackmail should be legal. I'm not so sure. Here's David: One pair that I would like to hear from on this are Georgetown University philosophers Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski. They wrote a book titled Markets Without Limits. The description of their book on Amazon states their thesis: “the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money.” Although I...
See Update at the end of this post. In his latest column for Bloomberg, "Seven Lessons About Blackmail," economist Tyler Cowen takes up the issue of blackmail. What motivated it, of course, as he makes clear, is the recent controversy involving Amazon's Jeff Bezos's allegation...
Do you think it should be illegal for restaurant customers to bribe (tip) the waitstaff in exchange for better service? If not, does that mean one must favor legalizing bribing politicians? The fact that public officials aren't engaged in voluntary transactions but exercise coercive power over citizens daily undermines the validity of analogy between them and private citizens.
Mark Z , February 17, 3:58 pm.